Disputed results from the 29th of March 2008 Presidential elections have left Zimbabwe in deep political crisis. The opposition reluctantly and grudgingly accepted the results, which have been questioned by local and international observers. Although the country was relatively calm before, during and immediately after the elections, there has been (and still is) widespread politically motivated violence throughout the country orchestrated on the masses of the people. The frustration and fear gripping the country in the run up to the second election scheduled for the 27th of June 2008, is almost unprecedented in the 28 years of independence. A proud country that was envisaged as an oasis of stability (at least in the euphoric early post independence days) in a volatile region is being held hostage by a bankrupt political class. Many Zimbabweans are filled with a sense of shame and anguish, as well as fortitude to salvage their country’s fortunes and future.
Lost in the electoral shenanigans and post election turmoil has been a historic opportunity to consolidate the country’s short-lived democracy, to confirm its democratic credentials in the region and on the continent. Instead, Zimbabwe now faces a prolonged period of political uncertainty that will play itself out in unpredictable ways from the streets to parliament, severely testing the fragile fabric of public order, social cohesion, intergroup relations especially those structured around the complex inscriptions of ethnicity, class, gender and generation. Some worry that Zimbabwe might turn into East Africa’s Kenya or even Cote d’ Ivoire, a once stable and relatively prosperous post colony in Africa that descended into chaos and civil war because of its failure to manage combustible politics of democratic transition.
In April 1980, President Mugabe was inaugurated as the new President for the supposedly nascent democratic Zimbabwe, before an ecstatic multitude of a million people at the Zimbabwe grounds. The intoxicating euphoria of 1980 has given way to widespread anger and anxiety. In 1980, the masses brutalized by decades of one party white minority rule under the Smith regime rediscovered their voices and will, the nation was united in its hopes for the future, believed fervently in the possibilities of productive change. Now, many feel betrayed and disempowered, robbed of their votes and voices.
Whatever the future holds for Zimbabwe and its tortured journey from dictatorship to democracy, underdevelopment to development; the present crisis has a complicated history rooted in the political economies of colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism that characterized the country for decades. This is to suggest that the current political crisis is rooted in complex historical forces that go beyond the “authoritarianism” and human rights abuses beloved by western media in discussing African politics or explaining its proverbial crises, or the excessive obsession with personalities in African media itself.
The March 29 2008 elections promised to achieve an extraordinary development in African politics: unseating an incumbent President through the ballot box! This would have been unprecedented in Zimbabwean history and is rare in Africa where incumbents typically leave office through the use of force. Nicephore Soglo of Benin is one of the rare Presidents to suffer the fate of the ballot box; elected in 1996, he lost the 2001 elections to the former dictator, Mathien Kerekou. This is a tribute to the power of incumbency, to win and rig elections, the inordinate advantages enjoyed by ruling parties to use the sanctions and seduction of state power.
The manipulation of electoral processes and results by ruling parties is of course not confined to Africa: remember the US elections of 2000, and President Putin’s recent attempts to prolong his rule? It is not uncommon for ruling parties in many so-called mature democracies to call elections opportunistically, redraw electoral boundaries in their favour, or bribe the electorate with contrived economic goodies. However, it can be argued the national costs of electoral malpractices are much higher in Africa (and other countries in the global south) that are struggling against challenges of internal underdevelopment and political and cultural subordination than for the more hegemonic western societies. Imagine the costs involved in electioneering Zimbabwe’s second election especially within the context of the food insecurity that is bedeviling the country at the present moment- the funds could have been channeled towards the procurement of food for the poverty stricken country were the elections done above board!
The Mugabe led government suffered a political tsunami as himself and a number of his Cabinet Ministers lost in the elections; more so that it failed to garner a parliamentary majority which is an historic event in the elections of post independent Zimbabwe. Hitherto, Mugabe has never been “defeated” in any previous election. In a sense, the election signified a rejection of leading politicians associated with Mugabe. The opposition painted Mugabe and his party as old men leading a corrupt regime to the detriment of the masses of the people.
Thus the contest between the octogenarian President Mugabe and Mr. Tvangirai pitted a generational struggle for power. It is one of the ironies of contemporary Africa that countries that enjoyed relative political stability since independence such as Malawi, Zimbabwe and Senegal are still ruled by the nationalist generation that brought independence, while the countries with more turbulent histories have long made the generational transition. In this sense the Zimbabwe March 2008 Presidential election was a referendum between the older and younger generations, between the Mugabe generation in power since independence and the Tsvangirai generation that come off age after independence.
Impoverished and exhausted from 28 years of authoritarian and corrupt rule by the Mugabe administration, the country was hungry for a clean government that would bring to justice corrupt officials and lead a transparent and accountable government capable of reviving the economy pursuing development. Much of the discontent and disaffection came from the retrenched and decapitalized public sectors, which have been under assault since the days of the structural adjustment in the 1990s. In Zimbabwe, as in much of Africa and indeed the wider world since the onset of neo-liberalism the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, the sense of economic insecurity has increased among large numbers of people even as their countries’ economies grow. This partly helps explain the tightness of the vote and the prospect of a government losing elections in times of rapid economic growth.
Zimbabwe politics exhibits familiar African trends. The country started its independence with a hurriedly negotiated multiparty system between the nationalists and the departing imperial power that could not withstand the homogenizing imperatives of nationalism and the intoxicating and intolerant demands of uhuru: nation building, development, and democratization. Before long, Zimbabwe joined the African bandwagon towards the one party state. It became a defacto one party state as PF ZAPU folded into the ruling ZANU PF in 1987 after the violent disturbances in the Matebeleland region in the early years of independence. As in much of Africa, from the late1980s and through the 1990s, the unproductive power of one party rule faced growing popular opposition. The struggles for the “second independence” by the restive masses and organized civil society scored limited victory in the 2000 referendum and parliamentary elections.
The current trials and tribulations facing Zimbabwe will not be resolved without the emergence of a leadership that is truly up to the challenge, a leadership that pursue a national project of profound social transformation, that eschews narrow shortsighted exclusionary politics and neo-liberal economic growth. Zimbabwe and Africa have no historic alternative from building truly democratic developmental states if they are to chart the twentieth century more prepared and empowered than they did in the disastrous nineteenth century marked by colonialism and neo-colonialism and their depredations that were simultaneously economic and existential, cultural and cognitive, political and paradigmatic.
The current leadership, both as “victors’’ and “losers”, seem keen to retain or gain power at all costs. The power struggle is as sinister as he differences among the leaders are small. But often it is the very narcissism of minor differences that breeds gratuitous violence and viciousness as histories of genocide demonstrate. The leading Zanu PF politicians engaged in combat whose followers are tearing their lovely country apart are members of the same recycled political class committed to neo-liberal growth that offer no real solutions to Zimbabwe’s enduring challenges of growth and development, choiceless democracy and transformative democracy. The recycling of the same politicians time and again without any positive changes in policies that helps the generality of the populace has become the norm in many African states. As this has become evident the lure of elections as engines of fundamental socioeconomic transformation has dimmed in many countries and the search for new forms of politics is underway.
Lost in the electoral shenanigans and post election turmoil has been a historic opportunity to consolidate the country’s short-lived democracy, to confirm its democratic credentials in the region and on the continent. Instead, Zimbabwe now faces a prolonged period of political uncertainty that will play itself out in unpredictable ways from the streets to parliament, severely testing the fragile fabric of public order, social cohesion, intergroup relations especially those structured around the complex inscriptions of ethnicity, class, gender and generation. Some worry that Zimbabwe might turn into East Africa’s Kenya or even Cote d’ Ivoire, a once stable and relatively prosperous post colony in Africa that descended into chaos and civil war because of its failure to manage combustible politics of democratic transition.
In April 1980, President Mugabe was inaugurated as the new President for the supposedly nascent democratic Zimbabwe, before an ecstatic multitude of a million people at the Zimbabwe grounds. The intoxicating euphoria of 1980 has given way to widespread anger and anxiety. In 1980, the masses brutalized by decades of one party white minority rule under the Smith regime rediscovered their voices and will, the nation was united in its hopes for the future, believed fervently in the possibilities of productive change. Now, many feel betrayed and disempowered, robbed of their votes and voices.
Whatever the future holds for Zimbabwe and its tortured journey from dictatorship to democracy, underdevelopment to development; the present crisis has a complicated history rooted in the political economies of colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism that characterized the country for decades. This is to suggest that the current political crisis is rooted in complex historical forces that go beyond the “authoritarianism” and human rights abuses beloved by western media in discussing African politics or explaining its proverbial crises, or the excessive obsession with personalities in African media itself.
The March 29 2008 elections promised to achieve an extraordinary development in African politics: unseating an incumbent President through the ballot box! This would have been unprecedented in Zimbabwean history and is rare in Africa where incumbents typically leave office through the use of force. Nicephore Soglo of Benin is one of the rare Presidents to suffer the fate of the ballot box; elected in 1996, he lost the 2001 elections to the former dictator, Mathien Kerekou. This is a tribute to the power of incumbency, to win and rig elections, the inordinate advantages enjoyed by ruling parties to use the sanctions and seduction of state power.
The manipulation of electoral processes and results by ruling parties is of course not confined to Africa: remember the US elections of 2000, and President Putin’s recent attempts to prolong his rule? It is not uncommon for ruling parties in many so-called mature democracies to call elections opportunistically, redraw electoral boundaries in their favour, or bribe the electorate with contrived economic goodies. However, it can be argued the national costs of electoral malpractices are much higher in Africa (and other countries in the global south) that are struggling against challenges of internal underdevelopment and political and cultural subordination than for the more hegemonic western societies. Imagine the costs involved in electioneering Zimbabwe’s second election especially within the context of the food insecurity that is bedeviling the country at the present moment- the funds could have been channeled towards the procurement of food for the poverty stricken country were the elections done above board!
The Mugabe led government suffered a political tsunami as himself and a number of his Cabinet Ministers lost in the elections; more so that it failed to garner a parliamentary majority which is an historic event in the elections of post independent Zimbabwe. Hitherto, Mugabe has never been “defeated” in any previous election. In a sense, the election signified a rejection of leading politicians associated with Mugabe. The opposition painted Mugabe and his party as old men leading a corrupt regime to the detriment of the masses of the people.
Thus the contest between the octogenarian President Mugabe and Mr. Tvangirai pitted a generational struggle for power. It is one of the ironies of contemporary Africa that countries that enjoyed relative political stability since independence such as Malawi, Zimbabwe and Senegal are still ruled by the nationalist generation that brought independence, while the countries with more turbulent histories have long made the generational transition. In this sense the Zimbabwe March 2008 Presidential election was a referendum between the older and younger generations, between the Mugabe generation in power since independence and the Tsvangirai generation that come off age after independence.
Impoverished and exhausted from 28 years of authoritarian and corrupt rule by the Mugabe administration, the country was hungry for a clean government that would bring to justice corrupt officials and lead a transparent and accountable government capable of reviving the economy pursuing development. Much of the discontent and disaffection came from the retrenched and decapitalized public sectors, which have been under assault since the days of the structural adjustment in the 1990s. In Zimbabwe, as in much of Africa and indeed the wider world since the onset of neo-liberalism the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, the sense of economic insecurity has increased among large numbers of people even as their countries’ economies grow. This partly helps explain the tightness of the vote and the prospect of a government losing elections in times of rapid economic growth.
Zimbabwe politics exhibits familiar African trends. The country started its independence with a hurriedly negotiated multiparty system between the nationalists and the departing imperial power that could not withstand the homogenizing imperatives of nationalism and the intoxicating and intolerant demands of uhuru: nation building, development, and democratization. Before long, Zimbabwe joined the African bandwagon towards the one party state. It became a defacto one party state as PF ZAPU folded into the ruling ZANU PF in 1987 after the violent disturbances in the Matebeleland region in the early years of independence. As in much of Africa, from the late1980s and through the 1990s, the unproductive power of one party rule faced growing popular opposition. The struggles for the “second independence” by the restive masses and organized civil society scored limited victory in the 2000 referendum and parliamentary elections.
The current trials and tribulations facing Zimbabwe will not be resolved without the emergence of a leadership that is truly up to the challenge, a leadership that pursue a national project of profound social transformation, that eschews narrow shortsighted exclusionary politics and neo-liberal economic growth. Zimbabwe and Africa have no historic alternative from building truly democratic developmental states if they are to chart the twentieth century more prepared and empowered than they did in the disastrous nineteenth century marked by colonialism and neo-colonialism and their depredations that were simultaneously economic and existential, cultural and cognitive, political and paradigmatic.
The current leadership, both as “victors’’ and “losers”, seem keen to retain or gain power at all costs. The power struggle is as sinister as he differences among the leaders are small. But often it is the very narcissism of minor differences that breeds gratuitous violence and viciousness as histories of genocide demonstrate. The leading Zanu PF politicians engaged in combat whose followers are tearing their lovely country apart are members of the same recycled political class committed to neo-liberal growth that offer no real solutions to Zimbabwe’s enduring challenges of growth and development, choiceless democracy and transformative democracy. The recycling of the same politicians time and again without any positive changes in policies that helps the generality of the populace has become the norm in many African states. As this has become evident the lure of elections as engines of fundamental socioeconomic transformation has dimmed in many countries and the search for new forms of politics is underway.
Zimbabwe’s current political tragedy is party of a much larger story. The absence of articulated and organized institutional and ideological alternatives under neoliberalism is at the heart of the political crisis facing contemporary Africa and much of the world.. It has led, thus far, to the ossification of politics, and in some countries, the premature abortion or aging of elections as instruments of transformative change. The specter of choiceless democracies is not confined to countries in the global South, for in many parts of the global North including the United States the ideological divide between the major parties is often indecipherable, the result of which is political apathy as nearly half the population has exited the electoral process. For more fragile societies, the danger is not apathy, anarchy. As a keen observer of Zimbabwe, my beloved home country since my birth in 1980 (the year of independence from the colonial yoke), I hope the country can avoid such a fate. Perhaps the ferocity of the reaction to the botched 29 March 2008 elections will serve as a wakeup call to the political class and the troubled citizenry to chart a more productive future for their beloved country. A good beginning would be for the contending parties to agree to a binding independent and internationally monitored second Presidential election scheduled for the 27 June
